Posts by Blake00

  • X4 Foundations - Split Vendetta (Freelancer Like Game)

    Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

    I dont know any X game where you were able to avoid combat or at least intense situations.

    There are pirates everywhere. There are Xenon invasions. Khaak invasions... the main story of ALL the X games forced you to fly deep into Xenon territory while being constantly under fire, there Split are pretty unforgiving if you provoke them... the Paranids are not any better than the Split.

    And since capturing other faction ships is the best way to build up a fleet (trade fleet first) combat is a key element of the games.

    Yeah I mean outside of the main story as yes its obviously impossible to finish the main storyline in any X game without combat. However it really is easy to avoid combat in X3 Renuion & X3 Terran Conflict since if you don't want the trouble then you don't go looking for it ;) . So if Wombat wants to play a sandbox exploring and trading game without fighting anyone he could do it just fine in them. He's talked about doing that in FL and FL is exactly the same in that its impossible to finish the story without combat missions. So if he can do it in that then he can do it in X3 games just the same.


    With X3R I setup shop building stations and trading ships in the Argon systems (especially presidents end as its nice and empty thanks to the Khaak in X2 haha) and I was never attacked. I've seen threads on the egosoft forum from angry players complaining about no action and no Khaak attacks and people would reply that apparently the Khaak fleet will pick a random system and attack it and generally just sit there for the rest of the game until someone kills them. I had the same problem as I don't know what system they picked in my game but I never saw them haha. Xenon never ventured further than a system or 2 from their home systems so I never saw them either unless I visited them looking for a fight (sadly they don't random spawn attack systems in X3 like they used to in X1-2). Not one of my ships or stations got attacked.. after the constant danger in X2 I was really shocked with how I was never in danger unless I did a mission or visited an enemy home system in X3.



    With X3TC same thing again.. no sign of the Khaak fleet so presumably they're off being lost in some useless system. Xenon are the same again only defending their homes. I was never in danger unless I went looking for it lol. I don't generally capture ships, I like building up a huge business empire and simply buying the cap ships I want. The one time I couldn't do that was with the Paranid Hyperion corvette which is my favourite 'player home ship' to spend most of my time in so I had to train up some marines and attack one. I made sure the Paranid loved me before hand, took it as quick as a I could, then hailed them saying it was an 'accident' just as my marines took control mwahaha. Then did some more missions for them to mak them love me again. Was like it neeeeeever happened haha. Then I dissembled it in my player HQ to get its specs so I could build more!


    Quote from wombat1940

    wishing to just become an SP “friend's with everybody, enemy to non” explorer and record my findings. This was achieved, with the help others, by tweeking
    my CF2.0 game. This all done without the use of God mode.

    Subsequently, I've visited every System, and with the help of Martind Forlon, mapped every System.


    In the original FL I too used mods to have that experience. I make my shield super strong and everyone like me if I killed nomads (even the nomads liked me more if I killed them haha). Once I made everyone love me I mapped out every system exploring every little secret hehe.. I hope to explore all the systems of CF one day too. No doubt Swat and the others have crafted all sorts of gorgeous and mysterious places to be found out in the darkness. :)


    Also I did something quite similar in X3TC.. as mentioned in a previous post there's a mod that allows you to see what all major and sub factions think of you (purely view them, it doesn't modify them) just like in FL. Using this I was able to work away via trading and station building missions to make almost every faction including the pirate factions like me haha. I started getting station building missions from pirates and building huge networks of stations for them. The more stations I'd build for them the more places where job opportunities (eg MORE station building missions haha) would crop up. Super cool to actually build pirate empires across multiple systems they usually either no or little presence in lol as I'm not sure if the egosoft intended that. By not taking on any factions shooting/war missions and only doing trading, building and other non-combat missions I was able to get everyone liking me except for the a special paranid pirate faction (apparently you have to blow up their HQ and cap ships to force them to respawn before they'll talk to you and give missions lol) and of course the Xenon and Khaak who I don't think it's possible to make them like you without cheats haha. But every single other major faction and sub faction loved me and wanted to do business with me without me having to fire a shot at anyone haha. I do like playing the stories though so naturally I switch from business player to combat player for those but no one has to do them if they don't want to haha.


    X3 Albion Prelude will likely be harder as there's the big war going on but I suspect I can avoid it and build a big trade empire again haha. Then when I feel like it I'll go in all guns blazing and complete the game stories.


    No idea about Rebirth and X4 though.. maybe they'll be more like X2 again where I was constantly having to run back to my stations to protect them from xenon and pirate attacks despite being in core Argon systems. I'd end up building huge fleets to patrol and protect those systems while I was away. Was a relief but also a bit disappointing when I didn't need any defenses for my stations in X3 lol. Maybe I should have built them in a hostile system to keep my heart pounding haha.


    Quote from wombat1940

    Been checking out other FL Mods over at Blake's Sanctum. The only SP mod appears to be FL Shadow of Fear. Sorry, don't mean to be disloyal to OP and Crossfire …… nothing will beat CF. FL Discovery looks to be Multiplay only ……..

    Oh and thanks for visiting my site Wombat. Unfortunately I'm guilty of being way behind on updating it. I've posted threads gathering info on FL like games all over the FL forums (I probably drive Swat nuts as he must see all my duplication across the different forums we're both members on haha) and have been given heaps of feedback on FL like games and FL mods, some appearing to give that single player experience you and I prefer.


    Here's some I've been told about and will add to my list but I haven't tried them yet..


    There's FL Nomad Legacy mod which has an english translation and a single player story with NPcs etc I believe.

    Freelancer: The Nomad Legacy mod - Mod DB


    There's FL Genesis mod which I think is hybrid like CF in that it is single player but supports multiplayer too.

    Genesis mod for Freelancer - Mod DB


    There's the old FL shattered worlds mod which I think supports single player and is not just multi.

    Shattered Worlds:War-torn mod for Freelancer - Mod DB


    There's FL Aftermath mod but I hear thats pure multiplayer like Discovery sadly.

    Freelancer: Aftermath


    Maybe SWAT_OP-R8R knows of some more single player FL mods not mentioned here or on my site?


    Outside of FL there's some FL like single player games coming or already out which I'm excited about however I suspect they're heavily combat focused which you may not like.


    Everspace 2 has a premade galaxy instead of random generated this time thankfully.

    Everspace 2


    Starpoint Gemini looks cool.. I've wishlisted it to keep an eye on it haha

    Starpoint Gemini 3 (New Freelancer Like Game)


    I'm waiting for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw to come to steam as I cbf dealing with another game client (epic game store)

    Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

  • X4 Foundations - Split Vendetta (Freelancer Like Game)

    When I was first introduced to the X series around 2007ish it was X3 Reunion.. as soon as I saw the game start in the Argon system and looked at that stunningly realistic planet and its moon, not mention the reflections of both that planet and moon on the sides of the ships and stations I fell in love and wanted to play it so bad as I don't recall any other space game looking as good in 2006-7ish.


    Not the best photo as its a bit low rez and only shows a small fraction of the system.. but it gives an idea of what blew me away all those years ago

    x3_screen_215.jpg


    Can kinda of see the planet ship reflections in the left of this shot

    x3_screen_165.jpg


    But I stopped myself, I went and got my hands on X1 and X2 and played through them first before getting stuck into X3. I'm glad I did as like we said above there's a connected story through X1-3.. however that being said X1 is very old and very difficult to play, there's next to no tutorial and landing your spaceship on stations without crashing is a nightmare haha (although you get treated to these cool in-game scenes after land though). So if you want to go back then X2 may be the safer bet as it's still good looking today, good story, pretty good interface. It was a very popular game, that some feel was never equaled after. I love X2 but I think I still prefer X3 in whole as X3 was such a huge game, it looked friggin awesome, and it was the first one that gave you a player HQ. However as mentioned above its mission structure was terrible as you'd have to sift through daily news to find missions. So if you want to do missions and become a trading and station building mogul than X3 Terran Conflict is probably your better starting point as that was the game that brought in a more modern missions structure and it added sub factions to the game that you can do work for. I installed a mod into X3TC that allows me to see what every single alien race and sub faction (including pirates) thinks of me and how much they like/hate me just like we have in freelancer


    Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

    combat is key part of the game and can not be avoided at all.


    Not necessarily.. you're far safer in X games than you ever were in Freelancer that's for sure. In FL you could be in the most fortified system in the game and yet still some asswipe pirate would unload on you the second you leave a station lol.


    I don't know about X4 or Rebirth yet but avoiding combat is actually not too hard in most X games. X1 and X2 have near constant alien raider attacks in all system making avoiding combat quite difficult however systems are big so you could usually avoid them but yeah it was usually impossible to not getting into some trouble, especially in X2. X3 Reunion and X3TC generally only have isolated conflicts in certain systems so if you want to be a harmless trader and station builder avoiding combat you can do it EASILY, in fact I found it a bit disappointing how little I was attacked in those 2 games, I feel TOO safe lol. There are pirate systems (& X3TC has war action systems) that sometimes block the way between peaceful systems but once you have a jump drive you can avoid them entirely. There's a huge galaxy of systems to explore in the X3 games so avoiding trouble is easy haha. If you want to play their main stories then obviously combat can't be avoided, but if you just want the sandbox business experience then its friggin easily to play a game without firing a single shot haha.


    The entire X series is on steam (& GoG too I think) these days.. I got them all dirst cheap (like 2 bucks each i think) in a steam sale a year or so ago, they patched the old ones to work on modern machines too.


    https://store.steampowered.com/franchise/x/#browse


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  • X4 Foundations - Split Vendetta (Freelancer Like Game)

    Yeah 100% agree with all that! The stories and characters of X1, X2 and X3 Reunion were really good. My connection to them was also why I enjoyed the books. However X3 Terran conflict onwards you just a generic player start sadly.


    As for multiplayer yeah interestingly Egosoft have said in their latest videos (Part 6 below I think) that they plan to expand on this 'visit other players' thing in future patches and dlc etc. So in another year or 2 maybe we'll find out what the final incarnation will be haha.


    Anyway over the last few days they've uploaded the final episodes in their series. I really enjoyed watching these.. but my god does the latest version look more complicated than ever! There's just SO MUCH you can do, customize and tinker with.


    Think (Missions) - The mission management system in X3 Terran Conflict was a huge upgrade from X3 Reunion & previous games. Every time I'd play those older game sifting through endless cr*ppy news about spawnling donations and people laying eggs etc trying to find decent missions I'd find myself screaming "WHY DON'T THEY DO THINGS LIKE FREELANCER" lol and thankfully Egosoft eventually listened. The X4 version looks similar to the excellent X3TC one but just better organised and with more variety which is fine by me lol!


    Explore - the exploring spooky derelicts part looked cool and reminds me of the stuff Star Citizen are toying with, except this game is actually finished haha (well sort of lol).


    Strategy - this was one of my favourite things about X3 Reunion onwards (X1-2 it was much harder due to more simplistic system views).. sometimes I would park my ship for days and not go anywhere and just spend my entire playing time in the system views directing my fleets, managing resources, and building stations just like a game of Sins of a Solar Empire.

  • X4 Foundations - Split Vendetta (Freelancer Like Game)

    If it wasn't for Freelancer I would never have probably heard about the X series as being a little German studio they seem to go under the radar a bit. One of my mates who got me on to Freelancer in 2003 said "hey I found a game series just like it" and that was it, I was an addict lol. God knows how many hours I've put into the X series over the last 15 years.. and I'm still way behind in them due to my OCD urge to do and see everything haha! These days every man and his dog is making Freelancer like games but back in the 2000s and early 2010s there wasn't that much out there so the X series (particularly X2 and X3) was my way of dealing with Freelancer withdrawal symptoms lol. Sure they didn't have the great story and awesome planet landings Freelancer had but the ships and planets were gorgeous and the game universes huge. Being able to become a business mogul and build my own empire of stations and fleets of capital ships to whoops ass with was particularly fun and addictive for me. I've even been reading the X novels over the years to immerse myself in their universe further (although I'm gonna get stuck soon as they're not all translated to English haha).


    Well anyway those who are familiar with X games will also know that pretty much every game they release is practically a friggin disaster at launch lol with endless bugs and broken or missing features. Then rather amazingly unlike most studios they then spend years releasing patches and addons to the games until after around 2 or so years the game is friggin awesome lmao! Sure enough X4 has followed that path and they recently released the first addon for X4 Split Vandetta which appears to be quite an improvement over the messy vanilla release. No doubt they'll be more coming too over the next few years. Presumably Egosoft must make their money back through addons as I don't know how those guys survive the bad first releases and somehow keep going. I think the first X game came out in 1999 so its over 20 years now haha.


    Has anywhere here played X4 yet? I don't have it yet as I've been holding out of a physical collectors release (yeah I'm one of those old weirdos lol) which is probably not going to happen as they've said they can't afford it these days sadly but nevertheless I've been drooling over their videos lately to build some anticipation for the inevitable digital only purchase lol. I like how you can walk around the bridge of your capital ships while station construction looks way more advanced than previous games with you putting together all the modules yourself into whatever custom setup you want. Then of course you can walk around them and hire staff and mercs etc.


    Trailer for the new Split addon looks cool...



    And now they're doing a video series talking about each aspect of the game..


    Trading


    Fighting


    Building


    others not released yet..


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  • Star Trek Picard Series

    hahaha and that.. okay I'm ready to rant now lol


    Episode 10..


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  • Future Project

    Not so dead after all.. I commented on one of his videos and he has replied saying he's still working on it and will be posting a new update soon.


    But yeah as I said before if its just one guy playing with graphics and no team this project can only really go so far sadly.

  • Future Project

    Someone just posted something rather interesting in the Freelancer  FB group.. this guy is (or was lol) doing some similar to what you were doing SWAT_OP-R8R and putting FL assets into a modern engine except he was using unreal engine 4 instead of unity. His original thread is on the Discovery forum and I think it's public as I was able to view it while logged out of my forum account so you guys should be able to see it.


    Freelancer: Unreal Engine 4


    No activity for a while though.. and he says he's got no experience coding AI.. all these fan remake stop being fun when they're not playing with graphics haha.. thats when so many go dark lol. He knows his stuff when it comes to lighting and atmosphere though..


    16D6lC4.png


    lyXakOq.jpg


    Z5PS6B0.jpg


    b5YWmNo.png


    LWDdyGz.png


    DgBkNmy.jpg


    3RSUBcw.jpg


    Space station bar and ship dealer:


    Landing on an ice planet base:


    Asteroids and weapons:

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    yeah aint it great.. hopefully you didn't read my spoiler filled ep 9 review before seeing it lol. I probably should have separated each ep review into separate spoiler tags but oh well..


    anyway just wait until you see ep10.. i don't think I'm quite ready to vent on that yet.. I don't have all day haha

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    Probably noticed I haven't posted here since I blew up a bit over Ep5 haha (although I see you've kept the fault finding going on without me haha). I have kept watching the show though but was less invested in it to continue posting my episode round ups. I said after ep 5 that they'd really need some good eps to undo the damage that did, so...


    Here's my thoughts on eps 6-9..

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  • Freelancer Facebook Group

    Well normally I do use google.. I'm always digging up rare stuff on there when researching content for my website & youtube channel.. however in this case whenever I searched for Jason's FL patch google would show sites with his old 2020 1.20 patch.. in fact even Jasons website itself still has the 1.20 as the primary download and only with careful reading do you notice his little 1.23 dll extra download there now lol. When I asked on the discord I didn't expect anyone to say yes its been updated. In fact by sheer luck my fast answer came from the guy who worked with jason on fixing it himself. However to your point I could have just as easily come on at another time, asked the question and got someone else saying no haha.


    I probably would have asked here or over on the disco or starport forums sooner or later but the question just popped into my head at the exact moment I was lurking in the discord and it worked out haha.

    PS jeez you're quick SWAT! Nothing in the FL universe goes unnoticed by you does it lol! I only uploaded my fixed copy of the darkened ENB mod to ModDB yesterday and I see you've posted about it at lancers reactor within a few hours of me doing it lol. People have been telling me that my original cloud hosted download link wasn't working anymore so I was trying to think of somewhere better to put it... then I realised the original darkened ENB ModDB page I got it from all those years ago allows non-dev team file/pic/vid uploads to their page so I figured I'd stick my fixed copy of their mod on their own friggin page haha! Then I thought to myself 'if they've allowed non dev uploads and I've got all these lovely videos and pictures of the ENB on my website I may as well upload them too as my stuff looks better then their stuff haha. So presumably all my rampant uploading to that page must have popped into some ModDB activity page somewhere that you spotted.

  • Freelancer Facebook Group

    Also forgot to say that while those discord groups are utter chaos they are handy for being able to ask a question and get an instant reply. Not to mention inbetween all the annoying messages sometimes you can just walk in on a convo and find an absolute gem of something you didn't know about.


    Eg I asked if there was a new version of Jasons HD patch that doesn't mess up mission 9.. I got an answer in like a couple of mins.. now I've the newer version I didn't even know existed lol.


    Then some guy posts about the recent widescreen 16:9 planet/city camera view fixer mod I didn't know about either.. been wanting something like that for yeeears.

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    That's kind of cool if the bar was named after him lol. I remember people posting about lots of Trek easter eggs on holosigns in the big city shots in the first ep.


    Everywhere I go I've seem pretty horrified responses to ep5. I've seen a couple of dudes say they loved ep5 though, I was like WAAAT lol.


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  • Freelancer Facebook Group

    Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

    And it does not help the real modding communities problems and ideas are only discussed on a chat. Everything written on a chat is doomed to be lost after a few days. Nobody scrolls through days/weeks/months of chat logs. And every information that is lost on the chat is also lost for the next visitors.


    Facebook, Reddit and Discord in my eyes should only serve to guide people to the correct websites/forums/communities instead of trying to replace those. Unfortunately people prefer fast and easy answers over correct ones.


    Yeah I feel the same.. I only started using Discord a year ago as people kept pushing me into it ("why aren't you on discord", "I can't believe you don't have discord" etc etc blah blah), and a year on I really don't rave over it. It has its uses and its popular with a lot of people so I use it to access those communities. However you've just spoken about my biggest frustration. No one goes back through hundreds of messages so its just a sink of information that essentially goes down the drain (the search tool is like searching for the word "and" in a giant word document lol). At least on Reddit & Facebook its easier to go back and look at topics instead of being flooded with nothing by comments, most of which are not important since we all know much people love to argue on the internet (I had to scroll you a 300 message Trump argument the other day in a Civilization 3 discord just to get an important Civ 3 mod link that I'd seen posted only a few hours before but had forgot to download urgh). Call me oldschool but nothing beats forums for easy browsing and locating old topics, their only weakness is that they are volatile. A bill doesn't get paid or an update/server move goes wrong and bam.. all gone. Seen it happen so may times to places I cared greatly for. :(


    Yup that's always what I believe and why I created my Starflight, Master of Magic, Sid Meier's Colonization, and of course the Freelancer FB group as while they're good for news and joining lost communities they are also very good at helping to preserve existing forums (I think I posted above a while back that the FB group literally saved a lost Starflight forum and brought it back from a similar situation to the FL community one you just posted about). When people visit my FB groups the first thing they see is a pinned welcome and info message that contains links to all the FL servers and forums I know about (including this one of course), the groups description contains the same text & links and I occasionally post topics that link to forum threads saying "check this out etc".


    I don't run the Reddit group so sadly I can't do the same there but its definitely not a community to ignore as there's 3 thousand FL fans there! I was really shocked yesterday to find so many FL fans there.


    BTW I didn't know about that FL forum, cheers for that. Will have to add it to the list and join up!

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    lol I missed the Quark reference.. which one of these non-DS9 connected characters mentioned him?


    As for.. episode 5.. wow.. if you liked that one even less than thge others then I'm not gonna argue with you lol. This episode broke me too, or more precisely it broke my enjoyment of the show. I didn't enjoy that at all. I thought maybe if I sleep on it I'd feel better but nope, today I'm even grumpier about it haha. Up until now I've only had little nitpicks and have really enjoyed show and have generally defended it when people in various forums have complained about it "not feeling like star trek" but there was next to nothing Star Trek feeling about Ep 5. Those people who complained about past eps not being star trek are gonna looooooove this one lol. I don't wanna walk away from a Star Trek episode feeling frustrated and miserable. When they played the exciting trailer for the next ep and all the cool Borg stuff at the end I didn't even give s***. I was like.. whatever. They're gonna have to work hard in the next few eps to undo the damage that one just did. I can only hope that they had to go that dark and callous to setup the audience to be brought back to the light and happy ending lol. But I can't help but think that if it turned me off that badly then all those people out there who's really not been that into the new show and were barely holding on will probably be like "stuff this!" and be done with it after seeing that ep lol.


    Spoiler


    Urgh.. end of rant. Breath Daniel.. Just breath... lol


    Like I said.. they're gonna need to work hard to undo the damage this episode did. I think I'd rather rewatch most of the episodes in discovery season 1 than ever watch that episode again lol.


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  • Freelancer Facebook Group

    Figured I may as well post this here..


    It's been slow going but the old Freelancer Facebook Group is finally closing in on 100 members mark which is nice. Got me thinking about whether Freelancer was properly represented on other big social media platforms like Reddit and Discord too. Figured if I couldn't find any I'd make my own, however I was pleased to see that I didn't have to worry as there's some pretty healthy groups out there on them these days.


    Here's the links if it's of interest to anyone...


    Freelancer Reddit: Freelancer Subreddit

    Freelancer Discord: Discord


    Nice to see Freelancer preserved and having a presence on all major social media platforms now.


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  • Star Trek Picard Series

    bahahahaha.. that's funny.. I didn't even click to the sunglasses thing.. that is a bit weird isn't it.


    The com badge match is cool too.. didn't spot that either! Although it has been a while since I've seen All Good Things.


    Episode 4 seen (belated).. WE'RE OFF!:


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    Guess I better hurry up and watch Ep 5 now instead of reading comments as that's just asking for spoilers haha.


    .

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    hmm yeah I do find my self wondering what the current relations are between the Klingons and this new isolationist Federation.. for all we know there's aren't great there either. They certainly weren't good in the alternate future set around now that we saw in the final TNG ep 'All Good Things'!


    I'm still enjoying the show but am still unsure as to whether I actually really really like it or not. Still need to see how story pans out lol.


    Episode 3 seen: (spoiler alert)

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  • Star Trek Picard Series

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  • Star Trek Picard Series

    Hmm yeah while yes in the past it made sense to play out the current real worlds problems on the alien races instead of the Federation, they have gone through a lot in the 24th century. Multiple borg invasions, a military coup, war with the Klingons, war with the dominion (that apparently resulted in millions dead, hundreds of ships destroyed), a Breen attack on earth & starfleet HQ itself, and could have lost earth entirely to a Scimitar thalaron weapon attack from the leaders a Romulan Remen military coup. After all that a isolationist Federation is actually quite plausible even if it's not Gene's original vision of a Utopian Federation that can endure endless trauma.


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    In fact I actually think they should have aired the first 2 episodes together as 2hr movie sort of thing as some of the events in ep 1 that looked like plot holes or lazy writing were actually plausible events explained properly in the second episode. I guess the writers wanted fans to share Picards confusion but in reality they problably alienated a lot of people who thanks to the limited info given were likely left frustrated and think "I'm not watching any more of this confusing cr*p" lol (I've seen comments like that across a few forums).


    Speaking of episode 2... here's my thoughts on that...


    Display Spoiler


    so yeah I'm enjoying it (more than Disco) but I'm still a bit worried about something things haha.. need to see more.


    Oh and if it interests anyone apparently CBS has posted the first episode of Picard on YouTube for a limited time. So, if you dont have All Access and want to check it out, you have til Feb 7 to watch it for free. Naturally it's region locked though urgh. :/

  • Star Trek Picard Series

    Can't have a 'STD' thread ( :D ) here without a Picard one. So what does everyone think of this one now that it has started?


    My thoughts (SPOILER ALERT) :

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